OK – I’m a little behind on this posting, but now that I’ve found it, I must confront it. John Dupuis references the Bergstrom, Courant, McAfee & Williams article on Big Deals in PNAS, which has garnered much attention in librarianship, including us. The opening of the non-disclosure agreements (NDA’s), which were admittedly unenforceable in light of FOIA, is a big boon to libraries. We should be actively filing FOIA requests of each other. Yes, it’s a pain, but look at what we’d gain.
On our part, we are objectively evaluating each and every package, and breaking up those that we can no longer afford or which are just not cost-effective. I have been using the distribution of the usage of titles in a package as a key indicator of its value. This so-called Pareto distribution (80% of usage comes from X% of titles) provides insight into the value of a package.
Anyhow, what I find most interesting about this post are the links to other postings and articles, which I will review carefully.
Libraries are For Use 
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